Christmas 2011: What we ate December 28, 2011

So Christmas is traditionally meant to be the time that you splash out on a fabulous meal and eat way too much food. While I certainly did this, I also kept it as simple as possible (and actually, simpler than I expected when I forgot to make some of the pieces!). I decided the only way to top such a great year of meat cooking was to cook a whole suckling pig. So that is what I did.

We ordered 4-5kg pig, which came frozen. The amusing thing is that we had nowhere large enough to defrost it, except our shower. So in a scene reminiscent of a serial killer film, the pig was left in the shower to defrost. I’ll spare you the photos of the pig in the shower, but here it is in the sink once it got a nice rinse off.

It was such a nice little piggy! I had been concerned that it wouldn’t fit in our oven, but luckily I was able to just fit it onto our largest roasting tin, with its legs tucked underneath it. I put some pieces of garlic and ginger in the cavity. I sprinkled inside and out with salt and pepper, then covered both the ears and the snout with foil, to make sure they didn’t burn.

Then it was just a matter of waiting until the pig was done – about 3 hours. I should tell you that I was feverishly cooking for that entire 3 hour period, preparing delicious side dishes, but that would be a lie. Instead, I waited until the pig was done and resting, then made a simple salad of rocket and endive, and some asparagus with lemon, to go with the pig.

Almost finished cooking; crisping up the skin

Final plate of pig, with asparagus and salad

I had intended to make some maple jellies from the recipe by the Butcher’s Apprentice, thinking it would provide a nice contrast to the pork, but forgot completely until I sat down to eat. Needless to say, the pork was delicious, even without the jellies. The pork skin was ridiculously crispy, and the meat was super rich and flavoursome. Both the asparagus and the salad provided nice, vinegary, bitter contrasts to the pork.

To finish, I’d intended to make chocolate truffles; however, the filling never properly hardened (I think I added too much brandy!), so we ate scoops of the filling with some pieces of orange and a sriracha-sugar brittle I’d made to go on the top of the truffles.

In some ways it seemed so appropriate after a year of eating the insides of animals, we finished it off by eating the insides of some chocolates!